Closing Gaps With What I Need (WIN) Time

One of the biggest challenges in elementary literacy instruction is meeting students at their level. Reading abilities often vary widely within the same classroom, making it essential to create opportunities for targeted support. At Ojibwa Elementary School in Macomb, Michigan, second-grade teacher Renee Sheridan builds dedicated time into each day to meet those different needs through a routine she calls WIN Time—an acronym for “What I Need” Time.

WIN Time is a total of 30 minutes per day, and it’s a blend of small group instruction and independent work where students are focused on “just right” tasks that are tailored to skills they need to develop or improve.

Students are grouped according to their reading level, and each day Sheridan meets with three of the four groups in her classroom. She works daily with students who need more support, while rotating her more fluent readers to meet several times throughout the week. During each 10-minute meeting, instruction is tailored to what students need most, whether that’s building reading fluency, strengthening writing skills, or practicing another skill where they need extra instruction. 

“Because we do WIN Time in our classroom, I’m able to give my students direct feedback when they meet with me,” Sheridan says.

For WIN Time to be successful, the rest of the class needs to be capable of working independently. At the beginning of the school year, Sheridan spends time establishing routines and expectations so students know exactly what they should be doing while she meets with their classmates. She uses CHAMPS, a classroom management framework developed by Dr. Randy Sprick in 1998, to establish those expectations—and revisits them each day. 

While Sheridan is ready to work with one group, she activates Coffee Shop Mode, and the rest of the class knows to begin on whatever activities she has tailored to their specific learning needs that day, which allows them to stay engaged without becoming overwhelmed or frustrated. “My students know it’s my special time with them,” Sheridan says, “and so they respect that because they also want their classmates to respect it when I have them with me.” Because everyone knows that they will have their dedicated time with the teacher, students have learned to stay focused and not interrupt, allowing Sheridan to give her full attention to the small group in front of her.

For Sheridan, those focused 10 minutes are about much more than academic support. “It’s a really special time for them to realize where they’re making growth, and they just feel valued,” she says. By building a consistent routine around small-group instruction, WIN Time gives every student dedicated support and helps the entire class develop independence, responsibility, and respect for one another’s learning time.

Note that WIN Time is also frequently used to refer to school-wide scheduled targeted intervention and enrichment periods based on current learning needs, a practice which has roots in Response to Intervention (RTI) and Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) frameworks and has been adopted and adapted widely around the United States.